Zooey's a Way Better Name Anyways

This weekend, in a bizarre turn of events (ok, not really, but it sounds enticing, doesn't it?) I found out the origins of my lovely little cat Zooey.

Saturday afternoon, my doorbell rang a few times so, finally giving in, I ran down and answered it. Outside was one of my infamous next door neighbors (the one who carries her baby under her arm while riding her bike slowly down the street) who I've complained about before on this blog. Anyways, in a five-minute avalanche of a monologue with narry a breath in sight, she told me the following:

Zooey, my grey cat, apparently used to be *their* cat. At one point though, their cats started tearing up their house too badly, so they were told by the landlord they couldn't have cats any longer. So she tried getting the kennel to come and take her cats, but they wouldn't (I think it's b/c our neighborhood has way too many strays for them to handle). So they just put them out, if you can believe that. She continued to put food out for them when she could, but she just put them out. So that's why Zooey was living in my front neighbor's desk on their porch. Yeah.

Anyways, she later found out that she was allowed to have cats again, so she was trying to track down the cats that she had deserted right before the nice cold winter rolled in. Apparently some guy down the street had thankfully adopted one. And her son had seen Zooey on my balcony on Friday (I sat outside in the glorious sun and let the cats wander around and climb in and out of the gutters and stuff), so he demanded that she come over and ask me about it.

My heart was in my throat the whole time expecting either to have to a) piss the woman off by having her demand Zooey (aka "Marshmallow"--what kind of marshmallow is GREY, people?) back and having to tell her that she could have her back over my dead body, or b) end up having bad blood between neighbors when I refused to give her the cat back.

Thankfully she was very nice about it and said that she had only come over to ask about her simply because her son kept bothering her about it but that she'd already told him that if Zooey was living somewhere new now, it would be mean to take her back since she was already used to wherever she was living. She took one breather I think once during this whole long monologue (which I tried to interject a comment or two into with little luck), but thankfully the conversation ended with her saying that she was just happy that their cat had found a good home.

Initially I felt a little bit bad having sort of usurped someone else's pet. But given that a) they'd deserted Zooey to the Cleveland cold, b) Zooey wasn't even spayed and had fleas, c) she clearly hadn't gotten any shots or anything, and d) I've heard how they yell at their dog, I didn't feel bad for long.

And man alive, if I don't love the piss outta that cat. Even moreso now that I know what she's been through. I snuggled the shit out of her this weekend, lemme tell you.

And for once (and this'll probably be the only time I'll ever ever say this), I am glad that I have those loud rednecky neighbors next door, otherwise I wouldn't've been blessed with such an amazing little stinkbutt of a cat.